Lincoln Center Presents OUT OF DOORS, 7/25 -8/12

Lincoln Center Out of Doors, which runs from July 25 to August 12, will feature 100 free performances across the plazas of Lincoln Center. Eighteen premieres and debuts highlight the three weeks of this latest edition of one of the country’s longest-running, free, outdoor festivals. Week 2 events and a chronological listing of performances follow, or visit: www.LCOutofDoors.org.

All events are FREE; no tickets required. Events take place on the plazas of Lincoln Center.

Wednesday, August 1 - Led by charismatic Israeli-Yemenite singer Ravid Kahalani and go-to jazz bassist-arranger Omer Avital, YEMEN BLUES is a super group of top musicians form New York, Israel and Uruguay. The group creates the ultimate high-energy multinational hybrid of North African grooves, Middle Eastern modes, and American funk by combining West African soul and American blues and jazz with the traditional music and chants of Kahalani’s Yemenite roots, fleshing out their sound with oud, gimbri, strings, and percussion. Also on the bill this evening is Malian guitarist and vocalist Oumar Konate making his North American debut as a bandleader. A rising young star from Gao who was trained at Mali’s renowned National Institute in Bamako, Konate is blazing the new wave of Malian music into the contemporary world, blending tradition with the internet's global musical perspective. Joined by the equally explosive guitarist Dramane Toure, bassist Mohamed Ag Mohamed, and percussionist Mahalmadane Abbanassane (his bandmates in Khaira Arby’s band,) Oumar sings about love, family and social responsibility, punctuated by his searing electric guitar solos and infectious energy.

Note: Khaira Arby, previously scheduled, will be unable to appear due to the current situation in Mali.Opening the evening will be the first New York performance of Ethiopian / French collaboration uKanDanZ, playing explosive, throbbing “Ethiopian Crunch Music”, inspired by the Ethio-punk-jazz of Getatchew Merkurya and The Ex.

Thursday, August 2 - For ten years, THE BAD PLUS—Reid Anderson, Ethan Iverson and David King—have been breaking down the walls of jazz convention with original work that combines rock, and avant garde elements, while deconstructing pop, country and classical idioms. With their 2011 On Sacred Ground, they’ve taken on one of the masters of 20th-century compositon, Igor Stravinsky, by re-interpreting his groundbreaking (and riot-causing) The Rite of Spring. Commissioned by Duke University’s Duke Performances and co-commissioned by Lincoln Center Out of Doors, On Sacred Ground will have its New York premiere in Damrosch Park. Sharing the bill is the German techno trio BRANDT BRAUER FRICK ENSEMBLE with the U.S. debut of its new-music chamber ensemble, a further evolution in the linkage of their classical and dance music pasts, with their techno present. BBFE draws inspiration from Kraftwerk, Steve Reich and John Cage alongside Detroit techno pioneer Jeff Mills, transposing their rhythmically sophisticated work to an orchestral sound palette through extended instrumental technique.

Friday, August 3 - Highlighting this evening is Kimmo Pohjonen & Helsinki Nelson’s Accordion Wrestling, a dance-theater work in which music, sport, and dance blend into a unique multimedia “squeeze play.” Reviving the dormant Finnish tradition of accordion-accompanied wrestling matches, Pohjonen performs while wrestlers grapple on a custom-made mat embedded with microphones. His work, with choreography by Ari Numminen, comments on Cold War and gender politics while lending a modern artistic twist to a classic Olympic competition.

TALUJON percussion ensemble leads a group of sixty percussionists dispersed throughout the Hearst Plaza, performing live music in this concert version of composer Phil Kline’s dreamcitynine, the audio installation of sixty one-minute stories inspired by John Cage’s landmark work, Indeterminacy, which continues, without music, for the entire Out of Doors festival. From vast boombox symphonies (his signature Unsilent Night) to chamber music and song cycles Phil Kline’s work has been hailed for its originality, beauty, subversive subtext and wit. In the GPS-based audio installation, dreamcitynine, an app “triggers” suites of original, one-minute text pieces as listeners walk the Lincoln Center campus written by many familiar names from the world of music, art and ideas, including filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, historian Luc Sante, American novelist/playwright Darryl Pinckney, composers Philip Glass, Julia Wolfe, Elliott Sharp, and David T. Little, musicians Theo Bleckmann, Nadia Sirota, and Nona Hendryx, choreographer Bill T. Jones and radio personality John Schaefer, among others. For the live event, audience members are recommended to download the app or zip file in advance, to play a special continuous 60-minute version of the text pieces accompanying the percussionists.

Also this evening, Chio-Tian Folk Drums and Arts Group performs Din Tao drumming in their US debut performance. The traditional Taiwanese folk drum was the subject of the 2012 box-office hit film Din Tao: Leader of the Parade. The painted bodies and colorful costumes of this troupe represent Chinese demigods. Formed by Taoist priest Hsu Chen-jung in 1993, Chio-Tian is exuberant, passionate, and dedicated—the troupe once carried its heavy drums 13,000 feet up the highest peak in eastern Asia.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 4 - HEIDI LATSKY DANCE’S GIMP challenges preconceptions and prejudices about beauty with compelling works that feature an integrated company of disabled and non-disabled dancers performing with gravity-defying athletics and grace. Choreographer for stage, theater and film Heidi Latsky, a former principal dance for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, founded her company in 2001. GIMP, an on-going project that Latsky began in 2008, examines the uncompromising ways we are often identified or defined by our physicality, and challenges the notion of beauty as having, one standard definition. The New Yorker said, “GIMP beautifully resets preconceptions about bodies and movement.” Dance Magazine commented, “GIMP is without a doubt a gleaming milestone…proving that the term ‘disabled dancer’ is an oxymoron.”

SUNDAY, AUGUST 5 – HERITAGE SUNDAYAyiti Rasanble! (“Haiti, come together!”), presented in collaboration with the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, celebrates the indomitable spirit of the Caribbean nation with dance and musical groups reflecting its resilience and pride. Feet of Rhythm Afro-Haitian Dance Company works to preserve traditional dance forms under the vision of founder Nadia Dieudonné, the dancer and choreographer best known for her infectious interpretations of banda, the dance of Ghede, the revered Haitian spiritual figure of the underworld. Founded by Öneza Lafontant, a native of Bakonwa, Haiti, Kongo’s music represents vodou, the spiritual fabric of Haiti, and perpetuates its message of love, truth, and justice through drumming and song. Master dancer and Tamboula d’Haiti artistic director Peniel Guerrier joins Kongo in an expression of folkloric footwork. Named after an 18th century revolutionary mystic, La Troupe Makandal channels the power of traditional Afro-Haitian music and dance in tribute to their late artistic director, master drummer and NEA National Heritage Fellow Frisner Augustin. The exciting and politically-conscious Raram blends the traditional rara horns and drums of bann a pye (band on foot) carnival music.

Also on the bill this evening, La Caras Linda de Mi Gente Negra - Homenja a Tite Curet Alonso, presented with the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, pays tribute to the iconic Puerto-Rican salsa composer known for his “salsa with a conscience,” that celebrated the lives of his Afro-Caribbean countrymen. Tite Curet Alonso wrote his first song at age fifteen, and more than two thousand songs later, had amassed 200 well-known ones, and some 50 major salsa hits, (“Periódico de Ayer,” “Las Caras Lindas”), performed by a pantheon of Latino artists including: Cheo Feliciano, Celia Cruz, La Lupe, Willie Colón, Tito Puente, Ray Barretto, and Rubén Blades, to name only a few. Tito Matos, music director and percussionist and saxophonist Ricardo Pons lead VIENTO DE AGUA, one of Puerto Rico’s preeminent bomba and plena groups, specializing in the down-home típico sounds of puertorriqueños. Renowned salsa singer Lalo Rodríguez (“Ven Devórame Otra Vez”) joins them to perform more hits by Alonso. They share the bill with GRUPO ESENCIA. Making its New York debut, the deep trombone sound of Groupo Esencia from Ponce, Puerto Rico, mixes salsa, guaguancó, and la samba with plena and other Caribbean rhythms.